It is commonplace today for owners and employees of even a small business to be accessible to receive telephone calls and/or messages at numerous exchanges and geographic locations. For example, depending upon the day and time of the call, i.e., business versus non-business hours, a person may be reached at one or more exchanges at one or more offices, in one or more vehicles, via portable telephone(s), by pager(s), at one or more home(s), at a relative or friend's house, etc. As readily seen, for a given person, the list of accessible numbers may be endless.
Several attempts have been made in the prior art to develop call handling systems which forward calls to predetermined locations. Such systems are generally switch-based, provide routing to a single destination number (or only one number at a time), and do not allow the subscriber to easily and directly create and modify a routing "profile." One such system is known as Call Forward Don't Answer (CFDA) service and is a call management feature of the Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) Custom Local Area Signaling System generally referred to by the acronym CLASS.SM.. The CLASS.SM. system is a switch-based system that relies on Signaling System No. 7. (SS7) capabilities to provide Advanced Intelligent Network services such as equal access 800 dialing and private virtual networks. CLASS.SM. is generally directed to residential subscribers and provides them with many of the enhanced features previously available only with Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) or Centrex services.
See also, U.S. Pat. No. 5,237,604 to Ryan; U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,848 to Pula; U.S. Pat. No. 4,893,328 to Peacock; U.S. Pat. No. 5,036,535 to Gechter et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,168,515 to Gechter et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,247,571 to Kaye et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,310 to Honda et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,260,986 to Pershan; U.S. Pat. No. 4,680,785 to Akiyama et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,929 to Wolf; U.S. Pat. No. 3,737,587 to Romero; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,353 to Canale et al.